Above: Album cover for III
Their first album also titled Guy which was released back in 1988, then followed by their second album The Future in 1990. Both these CDs were released by Uptown & MCA records.
Already a near million-seller in America, this debut album from youthful stateside trio Guy is a good example of the incursion of hip hop into R&B and the rise of the producer as a star. Guy is built around main man Teddy Riley, who initially made his name as the teenage producer of rap acts like Kool Moe Dee and Heavy D & The Boyz before going on to wide acclaim as the man with the golden touch on Keith Sweat's 1987 debut LP. Joined here by brotherly vocalists Aaron and Damion Hall, Riley's own vocal, instrumental and production skills are slickly showcased on a streetwise album. Highspots include the punching bass and flippant melody of "Teddy's Jam" and the smoothly enticing "Call Me Crazy", with only the insubstantial smoocher "Goodbye Love" any detraction.
Guy is the brainchild of Teddy Riley, who as a teenage prodigy, was the hip hop dance music producer of the late-'80s. His swing beat style combined hip hop attitudes with pop soul accessibility and took up the baton from LA & Babyface as he produced hits for (among others) Bobby Brown, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston and James Ingram. Here, as a performer, Riley who is starting to represent! Only on two occasions is Riley's precious talent for blending rhythms and melodies seen in its upmost best light-the inventive uptempo 'groovieness' of "Teddy's Jam2" and "Tease Me", which pushes the notion of the beat box ballad into brave new territory. But, good as they are, the whole package boosts the theory that producers should stick to what they do best.
Widely applauded as the originators of Swing Beat, a fusion of hip-hop beats with gospel/soul vocals, Guy comprised Teddy Riley (ex-R&B group Kids At Work) and brothers Aaron and Albert Damion Hall. At the close of the 80s the New York trio broke big by combining Aaron's talented larynx with the studio know-how of producer Riley. The sound and image was much copied both by artists and consumers. Riley went on to become a multi-millionaire, for his sins, though his acrimonious split from former business partner Gene Griffin helped to sour a couple of the more rap-based tracks on the band's follow-up album.
However, as with many of Riley's projects, the group did not replicate their US success in Britain. Aaron Hall's first solo album, The Truth, was released in 1993, including the swing classic 'Don't Be Afraid'. Riley would go on to produce, among several other projects, such as Michael Jackson 's worldwide Dangerous in 1991.
It's nearly impossible to overestimate Teddy Riley's impact on the current urban-music milieu. Since the late 1980s, Patti LaBelle, and as the cynosure of the hip-hop quartet BLACKstreet, Riley's artistic currency in today's R&B marketplace can hardly be questioned. The root of Riley's phenomenal success lies in his pioneering work as one of the founding members where he, cross-pollinated classic soul grooves with hip-hop's electro-rhythmic infrastructure and engendered "New Jack Swing"--and with it, the sonic blueprint for the next decade of commercial urban music.
Sound Files (MP3)
I Like - from the album Guy
